The University and College Union has written to the justice secretary urging him to intervene over a training provider’s plans to cut more than 100 jobs.
The union said in a letter addressed to David Gauke that Novus, a prison education provider part of the LTE Group, which also runs The Manchester College, has placed 176 staff at risk of redundancy across 27 prisons where it operates.
According to the UCU, Novus’ contract value to deliver this service has declined by 26 per cent in the north east of England following the introduction of the ‘Prison Education Framework’ at the beginning of April.
The union said the provider proposes to retain “only 62 full time equivalent roles, meaning over 100 posts are set to be lost overall”.
“These job losses would be hugely damaging at a time when the sector is already struggling to recruit and retain staff,” said Paul Cottrell, UCU acting general secretary.
“You cannot make cuts of this scale and not impact on the education and opportunities available to offenders.
“This is a particularly worrying move given that reports of assault and self-harm in prisons are at record levels.”
Cottrel urged Gauke to “personally intervene”, by encouraging Novus to reconsider these cuts and rule out compulsory job losses.
It is also asking the justice secretary to “properly examine” the impact of contract changes on prison education overall, as the loss of over 100 experienced prison educators could have a “serious impact on learning opportunities for offenders at a time when prisons are reporting record levels of assaults and self-harm”.
The union said research by the Commons education select committee shows prisoners who don’t take part in prison education are three times more likely to be reconvicted – although this report was produced in 2005.
The 27 prisons expected to be affected are located across Cumbria and Lancashire, Yorkshire, Greater Manchester and Cheshire.
Novus provides training to 60,000 offenders across 50 sites. It currently has over 2,000 employees, according to its website.
Peter Cox, managing director for Novus, said: “Novus have been delivering education in prisons for over 25 years. We acknowledge that this change will impact the number of staff needed, all of whom have been offered voluntary redundancy and support.
“Novus will continue to employ a highly skilled and dedicated workforce of over 2,000 colleagues, delivering innovative high quality education, training and employment opportunities to adults and young people in UK prisons.”
Earlier this year, Gauke outlined plans to overhaul the prison education system by giving prison governors full responsibility for managing provision.
The Ministry of Justice carried out a procurement process for the new education providers, known as the ‘Prison Education Framework’, and four were chosen: Milton Keynes College, Novus, People Plus and Weston College.
The Prisoners’ Education Trust said since the launch of the framework, there has “been some movement, with all providers having lost or gained eight or nine prisons in the new arrangements”.
Universities have stood out from the pack this week, while other types of providers have not done as well, including two big colleges which dropped to grade three.
But it wasn’t all bad news for the college sector, as London South East Colleges, which has 10,000 learners, received a glowing grade two report.
The University of Kent, which trains over 170 level 5 technician scientist and laboratory scientist apprentices, was one of several higher education institutions to receive an Ofsted rating of ‘good’.
Inspectors said apprentices “rapidly develop an extensive range of skills and knowledge that meet the high standards of employers”, while lecturers for assess them “frequently and comprehensively”.
The University of Greenwich also received a grade two from its first inspection. It has 35 apprentices on level 4 and 5 nursing associate and science laboratory technician standards.
“Leaders and managers have a clear and ambitious vision to provide high-quality apprenticeships to meet the needs of employers,” inspectors wrote.
The University of Cumbria improved from a grade three to a grade two. It provides level 5 standards to 37 apprentices.
“Board members are instrumental in ensuring that apprenticeship programmes are intrinsic to the university’s strategic plan for growth,” inspectors wrote.
Apprentices acquire “substantial” new knowledge and skills highly effectively, making them valued members of the workforce.
The University of Wolverhampton had its first monitoring visit since it became a registered apprenticeship training provider.
It was found to have made reasonable progress in all areas of the inspection, and was commended for how its 182 apprentices picked up good practical skills.
Senior leaders and governors at London South East Colleges were praised for having managed the merger of the former Bromley, Bexley and Greenwich colleges “successfully”, and “raised standards across the college”.
Its teachers have “good industrial knowledge and experience” in the subjects they teach, and the vast majority of adult learners at the college achieve their qualifications, with achievement rates for ESOL described as “very high”.
“Senior leaders and governors have presided over a period of significant decline”
RNN Group, which had 14,925 learners over the previous full contract year, dropped from a grade two to a grade three this week.
It was formed from two mergers of several colleges, and inspectors reported: “Senior leaders and governors have presided over a period of significant decline in the quality of education and training following the two mergers.”
RNN’s interim principal Jason Austin said: “We acknowledge that further improvements need to be made in key areas, and the leadership team is both determined and focused on achieving excellent provision across the group.”
The Bournemouth and Poole College, the largest provider of academic and vocational education in Dorset with over 7,000 learners, also dropped to a grade three from a two.
Leaders have “not tackled weaknesses” from the last inspection; including achievement rates for GCSE and functional skills qualifications, and learners’ attendance, according to Ofsted.
Other colleges fared slightly better, with Stockton Riverside College making significant progress in four areas and reasonable progress in one other, according to its first Ofsted monitoring visit since Redcar and Cleveland College dissolved and merged into it in August.
Meanwhile, Solihull College and University Centre made significant progress in two areas and reasonable progress in three others in its first monitoring visit since Stratford-upon-Avon College merged with it in February 2018.
Specialist college Brogdale Community Interest Company received a grade three for the first inspection of its provision for 26 students.
Fellow specialist college bemix, which supports people with learning difficulties and, or alternatively, autism received a grade three for its provision to 22 learners from its first inspection.
Calman Colaiste (Kisimul Group) bucked the trend, with a grade two from the first inspection of its provision to 31 learners.
Employer provider Greenwich Leisure Ltd, which has 131 apprentices, scored a grade three in its first inspection, with inspectors saying senior leaders “did not monitor effectively the training delivered by their subcontractor”.
Leaders “fail to identify when work in learners’ files is not their own, original work”.
Chosen Care Group, which teaches less than 50 learners scored a grade four, meaning it is likely to lose its funding contract with the ESFA. Leaders “fail to identify when work in learners’ files is not their own, original work,” inspectors reported.
As for independent learning providers: Advanced Personnel Management Group (UK) Limited, which has 68 apprentices, was stuck with its second grade three.
BPP Professional Education Limited, which has 1,750 apprentices, made reasonable progress in one area, but significant progress in two other areas, in an early monitoring visit of its apprenticeship provision.
Inspectors gave Unique Training Solutions Limited a grade two for its provision to 131 apprentices.
ITEC Learning Technologies was found to have made reasonable progress in all three areas of its monitoring visit.
Lastly, Calex UK Ltd made reasonable progress in two areas, but significant progress in ensuring apprentices benefit from high quality training that leads to positive outcomes.
The Department for Education has today launched a consultation on how to improve funding arrangements for learners with high needs.
The department is seeking views on what “may be adversely influencing local authorities, mainstream schools, colleges and other education providers” in their support for young people with special education needs and disabilities (SEND).
“We welcome views on changes to the funding system that could help in getting the best value from the resources available,” the DfE said.
The evidence document said the government “understands the cost pressures facing both local authorities and post-16 providers as they seek to meet the needs and ambitions of young people, and the need for appropriate levels of funding”.
However, it hopes to gather views on whether there are other aspects of the financial arrangements that are acting as a barrier to young people accessing the support they need, “regardless of the amount of funding available”.
For every SEND pupil, schools have to foot £6,000 of the bill for their provision, which is then topped up by councils. However, this works differently for 16 to 19 year olds, as there is no notional SEND budget.
Support for students with lower level SEND is funded through the “disadvantage factors in the national 16 to 19 funding formula,” today’s consultation explains.
“For those with more complex SEN, whose support costs more than £6,000, colleges and local authorities are expected to agree a package of support for their students with SEN, consisting of a number of high needs places funded at £6,000 per place, supplemented by top-up funding for those students with the most complex needs.”
The consultation added: “We would welcome any evidence that the funding or financial arrangements that currently apply to post-16 and post-19 provision are causing decisions to be made that are both unhelpful in securing the best outcomes for the young people concerned and adding to the costs of provision.”
During an education select committee roundtable in January, Pat Brennan-Barrett, principal of Northampton College, said she was “deeply concerned” about the “postcode lottery of funding, the devolvement of the budget, the interpretation of the language of the [SEND] code, and how that is used”.
Beatrice Barleon, policy development manager at Mencap, told MPs that one of the challenges of the reforms was the “implementation across all the different local authorities”.
At the end of the discussion, the committee chair Robert Halfon said the picture of post-16 funding for learners with SEND “seems to be a big tangled mess”.
Meanwhile, Graham Razey, principal and chief executive at the East Kent College Group, wrote in FE Week in December that, “while a strong argument can certainly be made that the amount of funding in the high-needs system is simply insufficient”, the first place to start would be to remove “unnecessary bureaucracy”.
He said some of the funding that used to be spent on support for learning disabilities now goes on administration, and argued students would benefit if the money went direct to providers.
The government had to promise a last-minute gift of £4.55 million to avoid a National College being unable to sign off last year’s accounts.
The unplanned bailout to the National College for High Speed Rail came on top of an additional in-year £3.6 million working capital loan from the DfE.
Accountants forecast a £7.5 million shortfall over the next seven years, and stated that the extra funding needed to be confirmed “before the end of January 2019 in order to support the going concern statement”, according to minutes from a December meeting.
Just this week, the college announced plans to ditch “high speed” from their name as part of a plan to offer a broader range of transport and infrastructure-related courses.
“It plans to ditch ‘high speed’ from its name”
The college’s 2017-18 accounts state that the extra cash would be received in three instalments, £2 million in 2018-19, £1.75 million in 2019-20 and £800,000 in 2020-21.
The college has confirmed it will not need to pay this back to the government.
FE Week understands that the shortfall had in part been caused by the funding band for the level 4 high-speed rail and infrastructure standard being set at £21,000, rather than £27,000, as had been forecast by the college.
Former education secretary Justine Greening opening the National College for High Speed Rail in 2017
At the time, the DfE, the Department for Transport and HS2 Ltd (a quango with ties to NCHSR) met to discuss financial aid for the college and it was made clear that “the departments will not let the college fail”, according to minutes from a December 2017 meeting of the college’s board.
Total income for the NCHSR from apprenticeships last year was just £154,000.
The NCHSR’s 2017-18 accounts also show it received a working capital loan of £8.3 million – which it received in two tranches: £4.7m in April 2017 and £3.6m in January 2018 – “to help with start-up costs that have been incurred in establishing the college,” according to a spokesperson.
This needs to be paid back by 2030.
The college, which was opened in October 2017 by then education secretary Justine Greening and has campuses in Birmingham and Doncaster, opened in 2017 and had already received £40 million in capital funding from the Education and Skills Funding Agency to construct buildings and purchase equipment.
A further £12 million was provided by the Sheffield City Region combined authority, and the Greater Birmingham & Solihull Local Enterprise Partnership.
HS2 Ltd also loaned NCHSR £2,906,000 in 2018 and £2,804,000 in 2017.
The college signed up just 96 students when it first opened, even though it aims to be taking on 1,200 a year by 2022. Its recruitment problems have improved this year (see panel
below).
Dame Cheryl Gillan, Conservative MP for Chesham and Amersham, has submitted several written questions to the DfE about the college, and on seeing FE Week’s findings said it
“clearly calls into question whether this is value for taxpayers’ money”.
NCHSR’s commercial financial director Martin Owen said: “Our first full-year of operation produced a strong set of accounts, and while we have been reliant on grant funding
for the college’s first phase of delivery, we’re managing our finances carefully to ensure the college is moving into a strong, financially sustainable position.”
“Just 96 students signed up when NCHSR first opened”
NCHSR is one of four national colleges to have opened since they were announced in 2015, while another one, the National College for Onshore Oil and Gas, has been delayed.
A DfE spokesperson said the national colleges had faced challenges initially, but the department had “confidence in the contribution they will make to Britain’s workforce”.
The financial assistance, the spokesperson added, was provided “where appropriate, as the colleges establish themselves and work towards financial stability”.
There are uncertainties around the future of High-Speed Rail 2 (HS2), with which the college has close ties: the chair of its board, Alison Munro, was chief executive of HS2 Ltd, the company responsible for developing the rail line, and NCHSR chief executive Clair Mowbray started work at HS2 Ltd in 2014 to lead on the development of the college.
Last month, the government postponed HS2 Ltd’s “authority to proceed” with signing construction contracts for HS2 by six months, which would time it close to the likely date of
the Budget.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Elizabeth Truss has confirmed HS2 will feature in the Treasury’s upcoming Spending Review, which could lead to the £56 billion project being axed, according to reports.
After seeing FE Week’s analysis of NCHSR, the Conservative MP for North West Leicestershire, and longstanding HS2 critic, Andrew Bridgen stated his belief that the rail link is a “white elephant” and said the college could be described in the same manner.
National College looks to rename in a move that would railroad the rocketeers
The National College for High Speed Rail has opened a consultation on changing its name to the National College for Advanced Transport and Infrastructure and is looking at expanding into other areas of transport, such as light rail, metro and freight, highways and airports.
But, if the college is allowed to change its name to the National College for Advanced Transport and Infrastructure by the education secretary, it intends to go by the acronym ATI.
This, however, could land it in trouble with the Aerospace Technology Institute.
Asked whether it would be objecting to this, a spokesperson for the Aerospace Technology Institute said it would be “reviewing” the proposal and responding to the consultation
“where appropriate”.
NCHSR’s consultation on changing its name is running until 29 May.
Event space income exceeded funding for training last year
The National College for High Speed Rail made more money from catering and events in 2017-18 than it received from the Education and Skills Funding Agency for training apprentices.
According to its accounts for that year, it made £216,000 from catering and events and received £154,000 from the agency for apprenticeships.
The college’s website has a page set aside for catering and events, boasting of “state-of-theart facilities,” which it claims could “help take your event to the next level”.
There are also two separate events coordinators for the two campuses, who help coordinate external events for NCHSR, which has previously included the Skills Show.
In addition to the rent money, the college’s 2017-18 accounts also show it made £253,000 from “miscellaneous income”.
So, the college’s real income was just £623,000.
The rest was made up of £4,610,000 from the fair value of donated assets, and £6,492,000 from the release of government capital grants.
While making a not inconsiderable sum from catering and events, the college failed to reach its target of 639 learners for this September, which was mentioned in minutes from a board meeting in May.
Instead, 336 learners were enrolled in 2018-19.
The college said it revised its learner target to 396 for this year, which the college is “on track to meet”.
The 639 target caused a team from the ESFA to remark “they had never seen such growth,” after the college had just 93 students enrolled in its first year.
Those 93 were less than half the 226 learners the college had forecast to have on roll, as it acknowledged in its 2016-17 accounts.
Nazir Afzal is “desperately concerned” about how the government treats FE. One answer, he says, it to raise its profile (and it will require more than a ‘Love our Colleges’ campaign).
The chair of north Manchester’s Hopwood Hall College has encouraged a Channel 4 news presenter to apply to his board and wants to persuade his TV contacts to make a drama about FE on the premise that media engagement is the way to raise the profile of the sector nationally.
“No disrespect to FE Week, but we should be in The Times, The Guardian. We need to be mainstreaming this conversation,” Nazir Afzal tells me from a golden throne next to mine.
We’ve found the only quiet space in a corner of the lobby at the Aagrah Midpoint, a dining venue on a retail estate on the outskirts of Bradford, which, we surmise from the regal furniture, also caters for weddings.
“Why not get a national media person to be on your corporation board?” Afzal says. “Claire [Fallon] wants to be, she lives in Greater Manchester – good friend of mine – and she has applied. We should be identifying where there are gaps on our boards and fill them.”
The public might struggle to put a face to Anne Milton
Pronouncements like this are easier to make, perhaps, when you count national journalists among your “good friends”, are a go-to interviewee for news programmes and have even had a BBC TV drama starring Maxine Peake made about your work.
Three Girls tells the story of how Afzal, then a chief crown prosecutor, took the decision to prosecute the Rochdale grooming gangs in 2012 at a time when no one else would take the victims seriously.
As well as attracting the ire of some British Pakistanis who believed he was betraying the community, the far right decided ran a letter-writing campaign calling for him to be deported. (One of his fail-safe speech jokes is that he was born in Birmingham and he wasn’t going to let them send him back there.) He had protestors outside his house and his children had to be taken to school by taxi for three months.
In 2015 he retired from the Crown Prosecution Service, where he’d worked for 24 years, to become chief executive of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners – only to resign a year later when he was forbidden from media appearances after the Manchester bombing at the Ariana Grande concert.
“My board were approached by every media group in the bloody world.” (He pauses to apologise for swearing.) “The public wanted to hear from me. I wanted to say things about the violence against women and girls element to it. I wanted to talk about how we as communities are addressing this issue. What we need to do. And my board were simply saying I couldn’t say anything. So I walked out.”
Now he’s a freelance consultant he’s free to say whatever he wants and is writing his memoirs. He will talk about his origins – the son of Pakistani immigrants, he grew up with seven siblings in a two-up, two-down, in Small Heath, Birmingham, and has previously spoken about being the victim of race-based bullying at school – his career and then “become a bit of a polemic near the end”.
So what change does he want to see? “Everything, not just the legal system … the country.
“Things like the fact that we rely on NGOs to deliver the services that the government should deliver. Or with refuge provision, we expect the victim to go into refuge but we leave the perpetrator in his home. Get the perpetrator out and leave her in the home.”
Afzal spends one week each month in Pakistan, working for the Department for International Development, and advises the Welsh government on strategies to eliminate gender-based violence.
To steal a half-hour in his busy schedule, I’ve tracked him down to a conference organised by a charity called Together Against Grooming, where he is, understandably, something of a big deal.
Jo Cox’s sister has just approached him to say thank you for a tweet refuting a claim by Peter Hitchens that the MP’s killer was mentally ill. He’s happy, he tells me, to use his platform to speak out on issues he has expert knowledge on, whatever the backlash.
FE Week’s Cath Murray meeting Nazir Afzal
FE is his most recent cause. He’s been involved in education for years: he was a governor at West London University, then Brunel University, where he became pro-chancellor.
He describes the five years of graduation ceremonies as “the best days of my life. Three days a year where I’m shaking thousands of hands … so rewarding.”
But the more he learned about FE, the more he started to see it as “the poor cousin of the education system. For the past 20-odd years, the investment has been going into schools and, of course, universities.
“But the FE sector, that’s just been ignored. You know the data more than me: 45 per cent reduction in [adult education] funding and so on. It makes zero sense to me. So I thought ‘Hang on a minute. What’s my next challenge in the education sector?’ That’s the one that attracted me. And then, by pure chance, Hopwood Hall became available and I decided to apply for it.”
He’s not afraid to use colourful language to describe the inequity in the system. In January he used his regular diary piece in the New Statesman to argue the case for more funding for FE, or “how it has been shafted by Her Majesty’s governments, going back years”. he paraphrases.
“I’m desperately concerned about how the government treats FE,” he says. “Whether we Brexit or not, the skills that we require as a country, where do they come from, if they’re not from the FE sector? It just seems so shortsighted to me that the government is not supporting FE in the way that it should.”
Afzal’s two eldest children have so far taken the university route: one is studying law in Bristol, the other politics in Glasgow. The other two are still at school.
He’s critical of the Association of Colleges’ Love our Colleges campaign, for having launched “far too late.” (It was launched in September, the month before the chancellor’s autumn statement.)
“Budgets are organised months in advance. With the spending review coming up we should be engaging really early on to get our messages across to the treasury and others.”
Skills ministers need a higher profile, he adds. “Given that I probably can’t put a face to Anne Milton myself, the public might struggle.”
He attributes the doubling of the budget for the Crown Prosecution Service, from £300 to £600 million between 2000 and 2005, to prosecutors such as himself working hard to raise its profile through “engagement with the communities, using the media more effectively, talking about our casework”. He wants FE to take a similar approach.
“We [the CPS] went from being perceived as an organisation that just did a fairly good job, without any fanfare, to one where we blew our own trumpet for years. So when it came to the spending reviews under Blair’s government, our budget increased and increased and doubled by the time 2005-06 came around. We could do that for FE.”
Public figures such as Steph McGovern, the business presenter for BBC Breakfast, have been blowing the FE horn for years. What would Afzal do differently?
“A lot of people have been through the FE sector and now achieved great success in life. Sizeable people with sizeable personalities, with great profiles. We need to engage with them to become our ambassadors. We need to explain what value we are adding.”
To this end he’s been instrumental in getting the chairs of all ten Greater Manchester colleges to agree to pool marketing resources and work together on putting out a united message, under the auspices of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
But doing it in one city is not enough, he says. “On our own we can only do so much. We need to build capacity, share learning. Ultimately we have one message to deliver, which is about how fantastic FE is and what potential it supports, and the journey it takes people on. We need to do this together.”
There are practical steps we can take to get traineeships back into the limelight – where they fully deserve to be. By Ceara Roopchand
One of the dangers of sector reforms is the tendency for older programmes to be left languishing, often sidelined with the hope that they will continue to function without requiring too much intervention by policymakers.
With apprenticeships in the spotlight following the levy reforms in 2017, and increasing focus on the soon-to-be-introduced T-level programme, technical education has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years. But in the case of traineeships, persistent barriers have impeded the programme from becoming the success originally envisaged.
Introduced by the government in 2013, traineeships are designed to enable young people who lack work experience to progress rapidly to employment, an apprenticeship or into further education. The latest available data paints a dismal picture, with starts declining year-on-year between Q1 2015-16 and Q1 2018-19, with only 17,700 starts last year, but these numbers haven’t attracted much attention against the massive slump in apprenticeship starts that occurred in the levy’s first year.
The barriers to success include the ongoing perverse measures of the Qualification Achievement Rates (QAR) as defined by the ESFA, which penalise providers even when trainees are successfully progressing into the primary progression outcomes.
As a result, many providers have reluctantly withdrawn from delivering traineeships to the detriment of young people, many of whom are NEET or from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Employers have also been put off by bad publicity in 2017 relating to two large companies offering unpaid, but good-quality and valuable, work experience.
I am not aware of a single keynote speech from a minister backing traineeships
The fact that in one of these, around 40% of the trainees progressed into paid employment via an apprenticeship was somehow lost in the media coverage. With questions now over the viability of some level 2 apprenticeships, we’re witnessing an unfortunate example of the ladder of opportunity being pulled from young people before they even get a chance to step on it. In AELP’s view, the point about having no formal position on paid or unpaid work experience should be a lesson government needs to consider when looking at the industry-placement aspect of the T-levels.
If I were to stumble upon a magic lamp on my next trip to the DfE, what would my three wishes be? Firstly, I would wish to address the QAR methodology which AELP has consistently said is not fit for purpose for traineeships and continues to punish providers due to ongoing issues between the main programme (progression) and component parts (qualifications).
A success measure methodology that takes into account whether progression is achieved or otherwise, in addition to achieving component aims, is a more practical measurement and likely to be supported by providers.
The second wish is to address the lack of flexibility in the current funding system on which this highly effective programme is based. A good starting point is to review how growth requests are managed, moving to a flexible process rather than a lagged model to meet demand and help support the growth aspirations of providers.
Furthermore, the calculation for growth allocations should be made clearer to providers. However, we should acknowledge and welcome this week’s announcement from the ESFA offering additional in-year growth for 19-24 traineeships.
Our last request would be for more visible government support of the traineeship brand. Traineeships briefly shared the platform with apprenticeships as part of the government’s flagship skills programmes but publicity and public support for the programme have dwindled dramatically.
I am not aware of a single keynote speech from a minister backing or publically promoting traineeships. It would be far better to avoid variations in support between further education programmes to maximize the awareness and choice of opportunities.
The long awaited “skills index” is too high-level to contribute to any targeted policy decisions, says Tom Richmond
“The Department for Education (DfE) has not defined what success will look like for the programme, in terms of intended impact on skills levels within the economy, nor what indicators they will use to measure success.” The National Audit Office (NAO) was, as ever, unfailingly polite in its report about the state of the government’s apprenticeship reforms in 2016.
Even so, its message was hardly subtle. Four years after the infamous Richard review kicked off the sweeping changes to how apprenticeships are designed, delivered and funded, the government still didn’t know what it was trying to achieve or how it would know if it had achieved it.
Fast forward to 2019 and the NAO reported that some improvements had been made, as the DfE had started collecting data on earnings and how many apprentices stayed with their employer over time. The NAO also stumbled across something called the “skills index” that was viewed as a proxy measure for the reforms’ impact, but even then the DfE had not set out how its calculations fed into its index or what kind of increase in the index would constitute “success”.
We finally have an answer to at least some of these questions following the publication on Monday of the “skills index” for the first time. The index, which aims to monitor the aggregate value of the skills generated by apprenticeships and classroom-based learning over time, uses four sources of data: the number of funded learners that achieved qualifications in that academic year; the proportion of learners that were employed after achieving their qualification; the percentage earnings returns to having achieved a qualification; and the average real earnings for employed achievers.
The overall trend in the index is unsurprising, yet disheartening. Since the index was benchmarked at a score of 100 for 2012-13, it has dropped to a score of just 73 in 2017-18. Although the score for apprenticeships has actually risen from 100 to 118 over this period, the collapse of classroom-based provision from 100 to 48 has dragged the overall index down with it. Significant funding cuts to FE, with the disappointing uptake of FE loans, have inevitably taken their toll on learner volumes.
The overall trend in the index is unsurprising
In general, apprenticeships present a healthier picture within the skills index relative to classroom provision. The move towards higher-level apprenticeships and older learners seems to have contributed to a slight increase in the average “value-added” attributable to each apprentice (probably through higher earnings), although this shift in emphasis within the apprenticeship system remains controversial.
So what have we learned from this new index? Not much, in all honesty. It is potentially a useful tool in the sense that it captures how many learners start and finish their training, in the classroom and workplace. Incorporating earnings and employment data into the evaluation of vocational education is a sensible step too, as we cannot afford to use precious funds on sub-standard courses that do not benefit learners.
That said, the index is so high-level – one set of figures for all classroom-based learning and another set for all apprenticeships – that it becomes virtually impossible to use the index to make any targeted policy decisions either now or in future.
If the number of apprentices went up, but their earnings went down, should the DfE remain calm or start to panic? How important are employment rates compared to the number of starts? Without the granular data provided by level, sector and age breakdowns, it is hard to see how anyone outside the DfE will be able to utilise this index in a meaningful way.
Perhaps the most telling aspect is that the index has only emerged now, almost seven years after the government’s major skills reforms began. This uncomfortable truth arguably says more about the rigour and substance of the reforms than any index ever will.
As we report this week, the latest DfE attainment figures reveal that since the introduction of the ‘condition of funding’ rule there has been a massive increase in those at first failing, but subsequently achieving English and maths GCSE by the time they are 19.
In fact, calling it a massive increase is probably an understatement.
The controversial funding requirement that young people with a grade D or 3 in English or maths continue to study
the GCSE has led to a more than doubling of beneficiaries.
Prior to the introduction of the policy in 2014 less than 10 per cent of young people went on to achieve at resit, which has since jumped to 21 per cent.
Or to put it another way, in 2018 there were 25,165 more young people achieving English and maths GCSE by age 19 after their first attempt than in 2014.
Along with the hard working learners, the FE sector should take a great deal of the credit for successfully giving tens of thousands more young people the chance to achieve these lifechanging qualifications.
Whatever your opinion of the qualification content and whether it is contextualised enough, there is no denying achieving the GSCE opens doors.
Many employers won’t accept a job application without the GCSE pass, so unless this changes there is little point arguing the Functional Skills qualification at Level 2 is in reality an alternative.
But instead of celebrating and taking credit for helping tens of thousands more young people, most in the FE sector still seem to want the policy scrapped and complain about young people being forced to retake the GCSE.
In my experience, many who complain don’t in truth properly understand the condition of funding policy when it comes to GCSE resits.
Firstly, it only applies to those with a grade D or 3, so those who have already nearly achieved the pass.
Secondly, it is unlikely anyone need be forced to study the GCSE given the policy includes a noncompliance tolerance of 5 per cent of learners.
And those that complain about the policy probably think that colleges already choose qualifications based on what will give learners the best chance of a positive progression, like entering the labour market.
Sadly, the last decade has shown that college leaders (perhaps inevitably) follow the performance regime, which rewards passing qualifications well above sustainable outcomes like employment.
Hopefully, these stunning attainment statistics will give the Association of Colleges, Ofsted and the Labour Party pause for thought.
All policies can be improved, but it would be a wrong and retrograde step to scrap this one.
Progress has stalled on improving qualifications for young people, but there are signs of progress on English and maths, says Stephen Evans
First, the bad news. The proportion of 19-year-olds gaining a level 2 or level 3 qualification has stalled. More than eight in ten have a level 2 qualification, and six in ten a level 3.
This has fallen over the past five years, following generations of improvement. T-levels and apprenticeships have a lot of work to do to plug this gap. . .
But on to some better news. The number of young people gaining good grades at English and maths GCSEs or equivalent, so crucial for life and work, is rising.
The percentage of 16-year-olds gaining these qualifications has been rising for some time – up from 40 per cent in 2005 to 60 per cent today. But until recently, few young people who missed out at 16 went on to gain English and maths level 2 qualifications by age 19. Of the 330,000 16-year-olds who didn’t get an English or maths GCSE at a “good” grade in 2002, only one in twenty had done so by age 19. By 2014, this had risen to one in ten.
In the same year the condition of funding was introduced requiring study to level 2 English and maths after age 16 for those not qualified to level 2. Today, 224,000 16-year-olds did not get their required GCSE English and maths grades. But one in five of these went on to gain good GCSEs in English and maths by age 19, rising to 27 per cent, including functional skills qualifications. The policy focus has clearly helped to reinforce and accelerate the trend of improvement, though progress is faster for English than maths.
Why is this a big deal? The 2011 Wolf review, which led to the condition of funding, highlighted how fundamental English and maths are to life and work, that progression rates for these skills are low in England after the age of 16, and that the lack of requirement to study these subjects after this age is unusual compared with other countries. Since then, research has shown the huge impact missing out on a grade C (before the change to the marking scheme) GCSE can have on a young person’s prospects.
Too often, GCSE English and maths at age 16 have been a sliding doors moment. It shouldn’t be that way, and the statistics suggest more young people are now getting more chances.
The fact more young people are getting the English and maths qualifications they need shows the policy is making a positive difference. But that doesn’t mean the current policy is perfect. There are still too many young people on a Groundhog Day of multiple GCSE retakes, risking putting them off learning altogether. Recent tweaks and clarifications to the policy should help, including clarity that those with GCSE grade 2 or below don’t need to then continue on to GCSE, but there may be further to go to “soften the edges”.
More can also be done to invest in teaching and support, to better share data on previous attainment, and to build the evidence base and share best practice. We also need a strategy for the many young people not currently in education – whether they are in work or on benefits – to improve these core skills.
That includes looking at how functional skills operate in work-based learning such as apprenticeships. Last, studies of literacy and numeracy show that qualifications don’t always translate into skills – learning happens best when it’s linked to real-world scenarios and reinforced.
The Learning and Work Institute’s youth commission will look at all these issues. But that shouldn’t distract us from celebrating the fact that more young people are getting English and maths qualifications. Our challenge is to make sure even more young people can build the skills they need.
